Nato deliberately bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during the war in Kosovo after discovering it was being used to transmit Yugoslav army communications.

According to senior military and intelligence sources in Europe and the US the Chinese embassy was removed from a prohibited targets list after Nato electronic intelligence (Elint) detected it sending army signals to Milosevic's forces.

The story is confirmed in detail by three other Nato officers - a flight controller operating in Naples, an intelligence officer monitoring Yugoslav radio traffic from Macedonia and a senior headquarters officer in Brussels. They all confirm that they knew in April that the Chinese embassy was acting as a 'rebro' [rebroadcast] station for the Yugoslav army (VJ) after alliance jets had successfully silenced Milosevic's own transmitters.

The Chinese were also suspected of monitoring the cruise missile attacks on Belgrade, with a view to developing effective counter-measures against US missiles.

The intelligence officer, who was based in Macedonia during the bombing, said: 'Nato had been hunting the radio transmitters in Belgrade. When the President's [Milosevic's] residence was bombed on 23 April, the signals disappeared for 24 hours. When they came on the air again, we discovered they came from the embassy compound.' The success of previous strikes had forced the VJ to use Milosevic's residence as a rebroadcast station. After that was knocked out, it was moved to the Chinese embassy. The air controller said: 'The Chinese embassy had an electronic profile, which Nato located and pinpointed.'

The Observer investigation, carried out jointly with Politiken newspaper in Denmark, will cause embarrassment for Nato and for the British government. On Tuesday, the Queen and the Prime Minister will host a state visit by the President of China, Jiang Zemin. He is to stay at Buckingham Palace.

Jiang Zemin is still said to be outraged at the 7 May attack, which came close to splitting the alliance.The official Nato line, as expressed by President Bill Clinton and CIA director George Tenet, was that the attack on the Chinese Embassy was a mistake. Defence Secretary William Cohen said: 'One of our planes attacked the wrong target because the bombing instructions were based on an outdated map.'

Later, a source in the US National Imagery and Mapping Agency said that the 'wrong map' story was 'a damned lie'.

Tenet apologised last July, saying: 'The President of the United States has expressed our sincere regret at the loss of life in this tragic incident and has offered our condolences to the Chinese people and especially to the families of those who lost their lives in this mistaken attack.

Nato's apology was predicated on the excuse that the three missiles which landed in one corner of the embassy block were meant to be targeted at the Yugoslav Federal Directorate for Supply and Procurement, the FDSP. But inquiries have revealed there never was a VJ directorate of supply and procurement at the site named by Tenet. The VJ office for supplies - which Tenet calls FDSP - is some 500 metres down the street from the address he gave. It was bombed later.

Moreover the CIA and other Nato intelligence agencies, such as Britain's MI6 and the code-breakers at GCHQ, would have listened in to communication traffic from the Chinese embassy as a matter of course since it moved to the site in 1996.

A Nato flight control officer in Naples also confirmed to us that a map of 'non-targets': churches, hospitals and embassies, including the Chinese, did exist. On this 'don't hit' map, the Chinese embassy was correctly located at its current site, and not where it had been until 1996 - as claimed by the US and NATO.

Why the Chinese were prepared to help Milosevic is a more murky question. One possible explanation is that the Chinese lack Stealth technology, and the Yugoslavs, having shot down a Stealth fighter in the early days of the air campaign, were in a good position to trade. The Chinese may have calculated that Nato would not dare strike its embassy, but the five-storey building was emptied every night of personnel. Only three people died in the attack, two of whom were, reportedly, not journalists - the official Chinese version - but intelligence officers.

The Chinese military attache, Ven Bo Koy, who was seriously wounded in the attack and is now in hospital in China, told Dusan Janjic, the respected president of Forum for Ethnic Relations in Belgrade, only hours before the attack, that the embassy was monitoring incoming cruise missiles in order to develop counter-measures.

Nato spokesman Lee McClenny yesterday stood by the official version. 'It was a terrible mistake,' he said, 'and we have apologised.' A spokesman for the Chinese embassy in London said yesterday: 'We do not believe that the embassy was bombed because of a mistake with an out-of-date map.'

To dozens of activists who asked why the New York Times had not reported allegations that the U.S. deliberately targeted the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade during the Kosovo War, Times foreign editor Andrew Rosenthal responded that his paper was still investigating the charges. Of late he has indicated that the investigation is complete: Unable to verify the allegation, the Times will publish no story.

The story the New York Times will not report emerged in October 1999, when the London Observer and the Danish paper Politiken jointly produced major investigative articles reporting that the U.S. military, acting without authorization from other NATO countries, deliberately attacked the embassy in May 1999 after learning it was transmitting military signals to Yugoslavian forces in Kosovo. The story was sourced to several well-placed NATO officials--unnamed, but identified by position--although NATO's official position was and continues to be that the strike was an accident.

A senior intelligence official says the CIA team in charge of choosing targets has no recent Belgrade experience.
By Jeff Stein

As NATO and the United States continue to deal with diplomatic fallout from Friday's Chinese embassy bombing in Belgrade, a senior U.S. intelligence official told Salon News that the CIA team in charge of choosing Yugoslav targets does not include any agents or experts with recent on-the-ground experience in Belgrade.

Speaking on condition of anonymity Tuesday, the official said that no CIA officer with an up-to-date, walking familiarity with the Yugoslav capital was on the targeting team when China's embassy was mistakenly bombed Friday, killing three occupants and injuring 20 more. Nor, apparently, does the CIA have clandestine spotters in Belgrade helping verify targets picked from maps and satellite photos.

The issue has taken on added gravity because the CIA has admitted it used a partially updated 4-year-old street map and "educated guesses" to select the target, which was thought to be a Yugoslav arms agency. In this case, the maps did not show that China had vacated its old property and built a new embassy elsewhere in 1996, even though American officials, from the U.S. ambassador to the semi-public chief of the CIA mission, frequented the embassy for events. The U.S. embassy in Belgrade was closed and its staff evacuated March 24.

As the primary intelligence agency among U.S. civilian and military information-gathering organizations, the CIA takes the lead role in supplying targets to NATO planners. In response to a question Monday, a senior CIA official said the CIA alone had selected the mistaken target.

The bombing tragedy, along with recent espionage revelations, has severely strained U.S. relations with China. It has also threatened to derail a possible solution to the Kosovo conflict proposed last week by the G8 nations.

Asked whether any CIA personnel with recent Belgrade experience were consulted on the bombing, the official, who often explains the spy agency's policies to reporters, told Salon News, "In connection with this particular decision targeting that building, I would not make that assumption -- no."

"In this case," he added in a second conversation seeking clarification, "it did not include someone who had been in Belgrade very recently."

Neither the CIA's recent chief of operations in Belgrade, nor any of its Belgrade-based spy handlers, who have walked the capital's streets and frequented its offices, art galleries and cafes, as well as its embassies, were assigned to go over the selected targets, he said. No one at the CIA with an eyeball familiarity with Belgrade is working on the target list.

"In this instance the answer is no," the official repeated on condition of anonymity. "This was a case where the people who identified that target had not recently been to Belgrade."

Asked whether the CIA would change the composition of its targeting team as a result of the mistake, the spokesman declined to answer.

It could not be learned whether other U.S. military and intelligence agencies excluded Yugoslav experts from their targeting teams. But other agencies involved in the targeting review process, from the Pentagon to NATO, failed to catch the CIA's initial error, the official pointed out.

"It was a team effort in the sense that there were a number of opportunities to correct this error and it didn't happen," he said. "There have been a number of suggestions laying the blame squarely at the CIA. There's a pretty elaborate review process between target selection and hitting the target, and it can be fogged at any stage of the process.

"The bottom line is that there's plenty of blame to spread around," he said.

Indeed, its been widely noted that American diplomats, who left Belgrade on March 24, knew where the Chinese embassy was: They had attended functions there over the nearly four years since it had moved from its old location to the new one, which was hit by $2 billion U.S. B-2 bombers. Chinas embassy was a major focus of American interest in Belgrade, as it is in other countries. Its embassies routinely host senior U.S. officials, from the American ambassador down to CIA agents using non-official cover, such as businessmen. Any one of them might have called attention to the CIA targeting teams error.

The mistake flabbergasted many intelligence veterans.

"My God!" said one retired intelligence hand. "In my time," he said, "we were required to go out and take pictures of the Chinese embassy. We didnt rely on maps."

But Frank Anderson, a retired senior CIA official who helped quarterback Washingtons proxy war against Russian troops in Afghanistan, said the absence of Belgrade experts on the CIAs targeting team was not only possible, but "likely."

The CIA's targeting team is "assuming the people who walk the streets of Belgrade are already there or otherwise engaged" in making the final targeting decision, he said in a telephone interview. "They think they dont need it [in the room]."

"I would guess on most things like that theyre going to assume that the basic intelligence is right there in their data base" Anderson said. That would be fine, he added, "if all their data was current, which it wasnt."

Meanwhile other analysts are poking holes in the official explanation of the mistake.

"According to old maps of Belgrade and numerous sources inside and outside Yugoslavia, four years ago the current site of the Chinese Embassy was a vacant lot in a residential area," reported Stratfor, a commercial Web site offering independent military analysis.

"Now the NATO statement that there was no pilot error and the admission that an old map was being used are completely incompatible. If we are to believe both these claims, then we must assume that the [intended] target was a vacant lot."

But satellite photos would have shown pilots that the lot was not now empty, the Stratfor analysts said.

"They would probably have noticed that the empty lot now had a large building on it" before dropping their laser-guided bombs, Stratfor reported. "The old map theory is preposterous."

Late Tuesday, a senior intelligence official began changing the official story, telling the Associated Press that satellite data had indeed contributed to the mistake. Photos showed the targeted Yugoslavia arms agency and the Chinese embassy looking remarkably similar through lenses parked in space.

Defense Secretary William Cohen also told reporters late Tuesday that steps would be taken to avoid repeating the mistake, the second of its kind recently. U.S. Marine pilots in Italy blamed old maps for causing them to hit a ski cable in 1997.

"First, the State Department will report to the intelligence community whenever foreign embassies move or when new embassies are built," he said. "Second, the intelligence community will strengthen the internal mechanisms and the procedures for developing target information. This will include new procedures for updating maps. Third, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Imagery and Mapping Agency will establish new rapid response procedures for updating critical databases for no-strike targets."

There was no word whether intelligence agents or others with recent Belgrade experience would be included in the process.

NATO deliberately bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, during its war on Kosovo, the Observer newspaper in London reported Oct. 17.

The Observer says that this was confirmed in detail by "senior military and intelligence sources in Europe and the U.S." This includes three NATO officers--"a flight controller operating in Naples, an intelligence officer monitoring Yugoslav radio traffic from Macedonia, and a senior headquarters officer in Brussles."

U.S. officials, including President Bill Clinton and CIA director George Tenet, all gave smarmy excuses as to why the May 7 bombing had happened. Old maps were blamed, among other things. The Pentagon had claimed that because the embassy had moved in 1996, its maps had not been properly updated.

The Observer reported, "The CIA and other NATO intelligence agencies, such as Britain's MI6 and the code-breakers at GCHQ, would have listened in to communication traffic from the Chinese embassy as a matter of course since it moved to the site in 1996."

The Observer says that a "source in the U.S. National Imagery and Mapping Agency said that the `wrong map' story was `a damned lie.'" The newspaper reports that a NATO flight controller confirmed that the map of "non-targets" that was being used clearly included the Chinese embassy at the correct site.

At the time, the Chinese news accounts charged that the bombing was intentional. Demonstrations spread across China and around the world because of this obvious act of war against China.

To this day, the U.S. government has made only the mildest of apologies and continues to insist publicly that the bombing was an accident. This is an open insult to the people of China and their government. It comes from the imperialist arrogance of the U.S. government, in particular the Pentagon, and its open hostility to socialist China.

The bombing at the time was really aimed at breaking up U.S.-China relations and at heating up the U.S. Cold War against socialist China.

WW reported it accurately

At the time of the bombing, Workers World reported accurately what the London Observer has only now confirmed. Workers World's Fred Goldstein wrote in the May 20 issue:

"There is an old saying that two excuses are worse than one. The Pentagon's blundering explanations prove that rule. First they said they targeted the wrong building in an unfortunate accident. Then they came up with the story that the CIA accidentally targeted the embassy using maps made three or four years ago, when the Chinese Embassy was three miles away from its present location.

"Old maps aside, if any agency in the entire U.S. government should know where the Chinese Embassy is, it is the CIA. Of course, the Defense Intelligence Agency, Army Intelligence, the National Security Council, and all the other spy agencies that checked and approved the target also know where the Chinese Embassy is. But the CIA's job is to spy on every embassy, and especially the Chinese Embassy, 24 hours a day.

"The CIA is supremely interested in China's relations with every government, but at this particular moment it is most interested in Chinese-Yugoslav relations. Given the weight of China in world politics and in the United Nations Security Council, nothing could be more important to the CIA than to be able to feed information to Washington about the political, trade and military relations between China and Yugoslavia.

"The CIA not only knows where the embassy is, but undoubtedly carries out both photographic and electronic eavesdropping, as well as satellite surveillance, on the embassy around the clock. The agency undoubtedly has compiled massive amounts of information about the staff and the activities of the embassy.

"Any agent assigned to surveillance of Belgrade, whether from Langley, Va., Brussels or any other place, who did not know where the Chinese Embassy is would be fired or demoted for incompetence.

"The CIA hardly needs to look at a map to know where the embassy is--let alone a three-year-old map. In fact, the way in which this matter was explained borders on a flagrantly callous and brazen boast of having done the deed. ...

"It is now clear that there are two main tendencies within NATO, the Clinton administration and the U.S. ruling class establishment over how to proceed with the war at present. Both are implacably hostile to the Yugoslav government and its just and heroic struggle to fend off imperialist occupation.

"Both tendencies want to use the criminal bombing campaign as their primary instrument at present. Both are for military occupation.

"But one tendency wants to bring the war to an end sooner than the other, through some form of negotiated limited victory for the U.S. and NATO. It has hoped to involve the UN Security Council to get compromises on the role of NATO, the Pentagon, Russia, etc.

"The other tendency aims to carry the war all the way to victory--meaning total capitulation of Yugoslavia--no matter how long and how much of an escalation that may take. This tendency has escalation plans in the works. ...

"The war-to-capitulation tendency is most openly represented by Gen. Wesley Clark, Supreme Commander of NATO, together with his spokesperson in the Clinton administration, Secretary of State Made leine Albright, plus British Prime Minister Tony Blair. This tendency fears that early negotiations could lead to a bombing pause, which in turn could lead to an early end of the war short of total surrender.

"For this tendency, bringing the issue to the UN Security Council is anathema for now. It would mean bringing the People's Republic of China into a position of leverage in the negotiations, as well as Russia.

"The arch-militarist tendency in the Pentagon fears that once the Security Council process starts, the dominance of the U.S. high command and its junior partners in London will be compromised, threatening their plans to escalate the war. ...

"This adventurist faction of the ruling class has the bit in its teeth at the moment and is ready to ride roughshod over anything that gets in the way of U.S. global military domination.

"But with the bombing of the Chinese Embassy, the adventurers in the Pentagon and their counterparts in the U.S. ruling class and its political establishment have risked bringing to an end the relationship between the U.S. and China begun in 1972 with the visit of President Richard Nixon.

"That relationship, which survived U.S. support for the counter-revolution at Tiananmen Square in 1989 and U.S. military provocations around Taiwan in 1996, will inevitably have to undergo a fundamental reevaluation in light of the attack upon the embassy.

"Above all, it shows the deep and irreconcilable hostility of U.S. imperialism towards socialist China that lurks beneath the surface in the summit meetings, the diplomacy and the trade relations."

WASHINGTON (AllPolitics, March 19) -- In his first solo news conference in nearly a year, President Bill Clinton faced questioning on the crisis in Kosovo and suspected Chinese espionage, as well as a host of domestic issues including fallout from the Monica Lewinsky matter.

The session lasted over an hour and Clinton spoke to a broad spectrum of issues ranging from foreign policy to the independent counsel act to first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton's political future and Vice President Al Gore's misstatement that he invented the Internet.

The president tried to prepare the American public for possible U.S.-led NATO air strikes in Kosovo in the wake of failed peace talks. Clinton said Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic "stands in the way of peace" and that NATO is prepared to strike against Serbian targets if pushed.

"Unquestionably there are risks in military action, if that becomes necessary. U.S. and other NATO pilots will be in harms way. The Serbs have a strong air defense system. But we must weigh those risks against the risks of an action.

"If we don't act, the war will spread. If it spreads, we will not be able to contain it without far greater risks and cost. I believe the real challenge of our foreign policy today is to deal with problem before they do permanent harm to our vital interests," Clinton said.

It was April 1998 -- when the Monica Lewinsky scandal dominated news reports -- that the president last held a solo White House news conference. It's one of the longest stretches any modern president has gone without a full-blown formal news conference.

He's answered a few questions with visiting heads of state. But the solo news conference has become a tradition many deem essential to holding a president accountable.

Back then the Lewinsky scandal was running full-tilt. But now, with impeachment behind him, politics and international concerns dominated the event.
Spying charges aimed at China

The day's news conference was the first time that Clinton answered in-depth questions of possible espionage regarding allegations that China was stealing secret U.S. nuclear warhead technology.

The president said his administration became aware in 1996 of the "possibility that security had been breached" at Energy Department labs during the mid 1980s. He said his administration has implemented changes to protect national security.

"It is my understanding that the investigation has not yet determined for sure that espionage occurred. That does not mean that there was not a faulty security situation at the lab," Clinton said. "Plainly, the security was too lax for years and years and years at the labs."

The Clinton Administration has been accused to being slow to respond to those internal reports of possible spying.

The president said he has asked the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, led by former Sen. Warren Rudman (R-New Hampshire), to assess the timetable and "to make any recommendations about what further action also might need to be taken."

When asked if any such breaches could have taken place during his tenure as president, Clinton said: "I can tell you that no one has reported to me that they suspect such a thing has occurred."

Clinton flatly denied the possibility that China spying was suppressed to further his election and trade goals.

What was the Chinese reaction to the embassy bombing?? I highly doubt they believed the explanation given by NATO that it was an accident caused by old maps?

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Of course we don't believe this bullshit. But there was nothing we could at that time other than verbal protest. That is the crulety of the reality. The embassy of a country was deliberately bombed by another country, which is a defacto action of war, but because we lacked enough military ability to counterattack, we could not even get a formal apology from America for the three innocent Chinese who were killed by the american missiles in this incident.

another way of looking at it is , CPC backed serbia , against US policy and this misalignment casued US forces to target any nearest symbol of CPC, Not too different from India giving asylum to HH DL and CPC targeted the nearest Indian Symbol Aksai chin.
I think the USA was kinder to CPC than they (CPC) were to India ?

The analogy may not be accurate Roma, Chinese were interfering according to NATO by spying and providing information to the Serbs, they have also interferred in India and Pakistan wars by moving tanks near the Indian border. But the action by NATO was an act of war this may be the first time I remember that an embassy was bombed during a war of a 3rd party nation. The Iranians in the 1970's took US embassy workers hostage and that was viewed by USA as an act of war where Jimmy Carter conducted a covert military action only to fail miserably.

The analogy may not be accurate Roma, Chinese were interfering according to NATO by spying and providing information to the Serbs, they have also interferred in India and Pakistan wars by moving tanks near the Indian border. But the action by NATO was an act of war this may be the first time I remember that an embassy was bombed during a war of a 3rd party nation. The Iranians in the 1970's took US embassy workers hostage and that was viewed by USA as an act of war where Jimmy Carter conducted a covert military action only to fail miserably.

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President Milosevic as ex communist was in bed with China no doubt about it but Chines support was more SYMBOLIC in political support (UN Security Council and public statements etc.)

Just like Russians also except that Russia went one step further by giving tiny concrete support to Serbia!

There was one Russian cargo plane loaded with weapons that have exploded "mysteriously"(we all know who did it) on take off!
There was also some Russian old spy ship in Adriatic informing Serbia about NATO planes etc..
But nothing that would really help (like S-300, Pechora etc.) let alone direct Russian involvement as you know, was not even close to come true.....

I'm even capable believing that Yeltsin was installed to power by CIA and worked for them........>
So Serbia was dead duck before all even started with really ZERO support.
I just can't swallow "Russia was weak" explanation be cause in those days Russia had all Soviet might of atomic deterrent
There was NO Russian COMMITMENT and they were the only country that could stop USA..
It would not be easy but it was possible to do it.

Milosevic had illusion about his "friends" he actually had NO support at all.
I wonder how much CIA helped that illusion even grow, to lure Milosevic in trap just like they did with Saddam (by leaving Kuvait deliberately undefended)

All Russia did was more symbolic, aimed to calm, re comfort their public opinion
(that was very supportive for Serbs!)
Of course USA would never make mistake with Russian embassy
( and we all know why!)
So in my opinion with that embassy bombing China have received "last warning" not to cross the line ....
USA was clearly saying "We are doing this not be cause wrong or right but be cause USA is boss of the world, and you sit there and be quiet or you'll have the same as Serbs!"

So USA knew that there will be Chinese protest and that China will stop there...
and China knew that next signal if China don't restrain from support would be much worse than "accident" with embassy....

Also what people forget Belgrade is big city and residential areas were bombed ONLY AFTER exact locating of the target and they have used high precision laser bombs only for residential areas or missiles (President Milosevic's villa in Belgrade was destroyed by missile)
That is also how they destroyed TV station in center of Belgrade and have killed almost all journalists in the building
(which is BTW classic example of WAR CRIME - deliberate premeditated cold blooded assassination of innocent civilians) They didn't even bother to chose time of the they where nobody or almost nobody is there...
They wanted them dead...
But than they did the same with Chinese embassy and they knew that they are going to kill people there

So one must understand for residential area targets with high precision weapons they used there... they had to LOCATE (& ASSIGN target (embassy) for the missions) That was main condition that Chines embassy become"mistake"!

That was just before the bombing have started..
interfering according to NATO by spying and providing information to the Serbs

I don't want to comment this before you answer the question PLEASE...
In what way did China "spying and providing information to the Serbs"
Information coming from Chinese satellites or something else or both?
Thank you

Jako I do not know what the chinese spy claim is, but it was all over much of the western press before they toned down the rhetoric and claimed the bombing to an accident due to maps that were 4 years old which also seems far fetched, as you have said it was more a symbolic gesture to China. The details you gave about Russians not participating as actively as they should or could have is interesting because the same claim was made by Vietnam when the Chinese invaded them,maybe things would have been different if someone other than yeltsin was in power??

Jako I do not know what the chinese spy claim is, but it was all over much of the western press before they toned down the rhetoric and claimed the bombing to an accident due to maps that were 4 years old which also seems far fetched, as you have said it was more a symbolic gesture to China. The details you gave about Russians not participating as actively as they should or could have is interesting because the same claim was made by Vietnam when the Chinese invaded them,maybe things would have been different if someone other than yeltsin was in power??

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Well I'll use your own words that reasons could be multiple like not onlyspying and providing information to the Serbs, they have also interfered in India and Pakistan wars by moving tanks near the Indian border.
It sounds quite plausible that the combination of Chinese irritating (for USA) moves has triggered USA (over?)reaction...
Just small detail, personally I'm convinced that any spy leakage was from infiltrated Serb government and or secret service.
To buy somebodies "services" in tiny by wars impoverished country, wasn't really so difficult.
"accident due to maps that were 4 years old"

HA HA HA would you attack country with 1000 planes and 30 countries and use
"4 years old maps"??!
I don't think so! They were at worst 4weeks old and probably 4days (cause as we know during the war(specially!) every army is moving their units)
Imagine bombing tank battalion where it was 4 YEARS AGO!
That excuse is good enough for housewives perhaps at the best.

I think "toned down the rhetoric"was toned that way not only to remove guilt from USA (no crime = no compensation) but in the same time to save China's minimum dignity in whole that mess.
And in the same time send undoubtedly clear message to Chinese that there was NO mistake at all.

As you have accurately stated bombing of embassy(=bombing of country) is act of war !
But at the time USA were at their peak of the power Russia at her lowest and China still insignificant

maybe things would have been different if someone other than yeltsin was in power??
Someone like Putin? Actually
I almost see finger of the destiny in that Yugoslav war
Like it was one drop to much in vase that was already FULL with total humiliation of Russian army in Chechen wars!
And now they had to watch how their allays and Slavic cousins get killed by that NATO that was every day more aggressive even to Russia.
That has triggered worsening Yeltsin bad health already ruined with his alcohol excesses.
But also has triggered Putin as best candidate also!
He was (as ex KGB, FSB partly nostalgic for Soviet era greatness) perfect candidate for the forces that were pushing him on the top "siloviki"!
Siloviki were all those close to the highest power and specially FSB & KGB and military.
They wanted dignity of Russia back cause after Yeltsin Russia was in total ruins
And the bandits who were robbing Russia - oligarchs didn't have time to organize
They were new to power and didn't have time to infiltrate Russian elite
We all know how Putin dealt with them

I also see finger of the destiny, made in choice of USA to pick more and more fight during decade as power starts to dwindle.
It looks almost like global convulsion of power.
Moment to grab the world as Master.... not to be part of it,to control it simply yet world by some magic becomes sand and escapes between fingers

I actually think that was carefully planned strategy to destroy Yugoslavia and move on Russia
And also think that Yeltsin's replacement Putin turned to be big surprise for many on the West.
And that he has ruined many plans for Russia on the West
But than for Yugoslavia's destiny was also to late!
Putin or anybody else couldn't change that, it was to late!
He was new player and Kosovo war had undoubtedly made impact on his way to play the game
And if he resurface in 2012 as President we will definitely see what is his matured meditated response on Chechnya, Georgia and Kosovo
The game is not over yet